Tony Burrows

Anthony "Tony" Burrows (born 14 April 1942, in Exeter, Devon) is a British session singer. He has been credited with singing lead on hit singles for more groups than any other recording artist, both on the UK singles charts and the US "Billboard" Hot 100 chart.

Career

In the early 1960s he was a member of The Kestrels, a vocal harmony group which also included the future songwriting team Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook. Subsequently he joined The Ivy League (unfortunately after their hit-making days). He was still with them when they metamorphosed into The Flower Pot Men. The Flower Pot Men only ever had the one hit, "Let's Go to San Francisco", which nevertheless reached number four in the UK Singles Chart in the autumn of 1967. Two founding members of Deep Purple, Jon Lord and Nick Simper, were also part of the band.

Later, Burrows sang the lead vocals on several hit songs under different group names, Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" (April 1970); White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'" (July 1970); The Pipkins' novelty song "Gimme Dat Ding" (July 1970); and The First Class' "Beach Baby" (October 1974). With these four hits, he may be music's most prolific "one-hit wonder". He also sang lead vocals on The Brotherhood of Man's "United We Stand", which did not top the UK charts but reached the Top 10 in the US.

In February 1970, he became the first (and still the only) person to appear on BBC Television's Top Of The Pops fronting three different acts in one show: Edison Lighthouse (who were number one that week), White Plains, and Brotherhood of Man. Afterwards, he was told that he would be unofficially blacklisted from the programme as listeners might think it was a "fix", with his appearing so often. Nonetheless, he returned to the show a few weeks later as one member of The Pipkins, a duo - the other member being fellow ex-Kestrel Roger Greenaway. Nevertheless this success worked against him, in that he subsequently made several singles under his own name which were excluded from radio playlists, among them "Melanie Makes Me Smile", "The Humming Song", and "Hand Me Down Man".

He has also recorded as a session singer with Elton John, Cliff Richard, and James Last.

External links

* [http://www.popentertainment.com/burrows.htm Tony Burrows interview]
* [http://www.ne.jp/asahi/salaryman/asada/burrows.htm Tony Burrows website and discography]